A facile approach to prepare porphyrinic porous aromatic frameworks for small hydrocarbon separation

Porous organic frameworks (POFs) have attracted a great deal of attention thanks to their high surface areas, high stability and controllable skeletons. We synthesize a series of porphyrin-based porous aromatic frameworks (PAF-40s) through a cost-effective approach. The PAF-40s exhibit high surface areas and excellent chemical and thermal stability. Specifically, these PAF materials possess high adsorption capacity of small hydrocarbons, such as methane, ethylene, ethane and propane, at room temperature. Furthermore, the PAFs have remarkably high adsorption selectivity values of C₂ and C₃ hydrocarbons over CH₄.